I'm not a huge fan of Independence Day. I hate fireworks - especially how my neighbors set them off at 2am for weeks surrounding the date. I'm not a big believer in the historical narrative of American "independence" and "freedom" - after all, slavery ended in England long before America.

However, on the whole, and as an American, I am appreciative of the "American project" and like having a day off as much as the next bloke. I ate cooked meats in the shape of a tube, played board games, and watched Yellow Submarine. We played Small World. Everybody enjoyed it. It was good fun. We will have to make sure to play it at home when we only have the three people.

Our apartment is quite well-insulated. We turned the AC off at maybe 11am shortly before we left for our 4th of July celebrations. When we returned at like 8:30, it was only 83 degrees inside despite a high of 100+ and an exterior temperature still in the low 90s. It took a while for it to cool off when we turned the AC on, though.

Reading a bit about "online learning". Not what it sounds like at first blush, it's sequential learning. It can be taken as an approach to statistics without probability. Coincidentally, Larry Wasserman's web-log just wrote about it. I take this as a sign. I like how it talks about "regret". "Maximum regret", "minimax regret", etc.

A friend of mine, an economic consultant of sorts, wrote an unpublished article about predicting the impact of the ACA on providers and insurers based on shocks to their stock prices and conluded the hospitals benefit and insurers don't. That sounds about right according to my hindsight bias: increased regulation (costly for insurers to implement) and firm governmental limits on loss ratios don't sound good for insurer profits. Those thinking of this as a payout for insurers need to join the reality-based community.

I suppose the evening of July 3rd counts as part of the 4th festivities, so I should mention that, too. We went and saw Brave and then ate at an "Irish" pub. The food was good, but pricey. In retrospect, perhaps we should have eaten at the cheaper-looking price with a taco special, but it was good and I won't complain. I had the "Irish breakfast". Brave was a fun film and very well done. It isn't great literature and feels like more Disney (good Disney) than Pixar, but it's pretty good for what it was. I do like how they didn't force Merida into a romance at the end.

I wonder if the recent bouts of extreme weather are the sort of thing that will finally spur Americans into action about climate change. I had a joking troll comment on G+ about how global warming is the Democrat Party's fault. Their high taxes are interfering with free market solutions to the energy crisis and climate change. All seriousness aside, though, it is only when, rightly or wrongly, the American public feels that global warming is going to be destructive or, worse, inconvenient to their way of life in the immediate future will they do anything about it. The next month and the next three months are predicted to be warmer than normal across most of the US and the drought monitor looks terrible (the predictions look worse).

I don't agree with that review at all. One of the things that I liked about that film was that this was one of the first kids movies I've seen in a bajillion years where both parents were alive and were constructive influences on their kids' lives. In this film, it was pretty damn clear that Merida got became the independent firebrand she was because of her father's indulgence/influence.

Sure, there's some mockery of male testosterone induced stupidity, but hey, that's worth mocking. Was it from a women's perspective? Sure, but I think if the movie was trying to make the "father's aren't needed" case, they would have offed him as so many other kids movies do with the inconvenient parent. The rest of the strawman feminist rant is typical of why I don't particularly like Card in the first place.

In terms of independence, one of the things that has always struck me is that unlike most other revolts, there was just no real culture clash/economic clash/etc. that really drove it. It was a revolt against parliamentary idiocy.---[ucblockhead is] useless and subhuman

there's a lot of money to be made in cutting energy consumption and sinking money into new infrastructure. we all agree that climate change is bad and it ought to be opposed in some way, and therefore the free market must, in some way, solve this problem, because markets are efficient.

and a captive market. Right now the return on continued oil production is pretty low. So you continue with that and reap the profits. Then when it becomes necessary to build additional housing you do so. If possible you execute the Lex Luthor Superman The Movie scheme and buy up adjacent real estate. In a down market like now you can trun an attractive profit. I have more faith in capitalism than in free markets.

when connecting serial cables between PCs and CNC machine tools was part of my job, I just used to carry a load of cable, various plugs and soldering kit. Once you've worked out all the iterations of male/female/9pin/25pin/CTS-RTS/XON-XOFF etc. it was far easier to make up a cable when you got there.

...would have a lot better time in life if they realized that this is the sort of stuff their english teachers want them to write (or would be perfectly okay with them writing). with perhaps a couple minor modifications in tone.

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